


The Stars Have Gone Dark

by captainofthefallen



Category: Pillars of Eternity
Genre: Durance is there but uncharacteristically keeps his mouth shut, Gen, Temple of Eothas quest, This Is Not A Happy Story Folks, and putting my own spin on how Mara sees things, feat. me taking liberties with cipher abilities, in Gilded Vale, or at least a lot of it takes place in Mara's head, rather introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-28 08:30:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20061061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainofthefallen/pseuds/captainofthefallen
Summary: Mara feels an echo of a soul, calling to her from under the ground in the center of Gilded Vale. It only gets worse as she investigates.





	The Stars Have Gone Dark

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a while ago so I can't quite say what prompted it, but I found it again and thought it might be worth posting.

Edér is bickering with Durance again as Aloth wonders aloud, possibly to himself, how this man—Kolsc, If Edér is to be believed—could wander into town unnoticed if Raedric wants his head so badly.    


Mara just takes a deep breath and tries to center herself. Back in her father's shop, she’d have picked a random antique to trace, but here all she’s got are her weapons and armor (and everyone else’s, but she’s not going there—prying into customers’ histories was one thing, but these are... well, she’ll be traveling with them for the foreseeable future anyway, and that’s not a can of worms she wants to go anywhere near).    


So she just breathes, closes her eyes, and reaches out for _something_.    


She doesn’t stop to remember that she’s a Watcher this time around.    


She feels something, though, so she works her way along it, a thread, barely there, almost like it’s been fading for years, frayed and worn and... rusty? That’s new.    


She hears the rushing, the sound that haunted her dreams before she spoke to the dead woman and has gotten worse since. Outside it, there might be voices, but none of it matters, she’s following this fraying, rusty thread to its source because she feels... it feels... cheated? She can’t tell—none of the objects ever had _feelings_, just facts and pasts and there was no rush of euphoria at a won battle or pang of grief at a fallen brother or even a twinge of jealousy from a jilted lover, just the history.    


This is different.    


The rushing fades a little and she hears footsteps echoing on stone and her skin feels damp and cold and—   


She lets the thread slip a little, opening her eyes in time to step down the last stair into an underground ruin, the stone floor emblazoned with the sun and stars that only ever mean Eothas.    


There’s a ghost of breath to her right, and Edér stands next to her, looking around, and his face betrays none of what he must be feeling, looking at the ruins of... of what, she doesn’t quite know. His people? His family, even? His god, certainly, but... what was this place to him?    


The question burns at her insides but she won’t ask it. She wouldn’t answer if she were him either.    


Finally he speaks, his voice low. “Haven’t been down here in... five, six years. Used to be real nice. Bright. Warm.”    


She doesn’t ask if his voice is lowered because this was a temple, or because it’s now a crypt. But she wonders. Maybe it’s both.    


Aloth clears his throat from her other side. “Are you all right, Mara? You... seemed to fade for a moment.”   


Edér nods in agreement. “Walked down here like you were in a trance.”    


She shakes her head. “I’m okay. I was...” She’s trying to figure how best to describe what exactly she was doing without sounding more crazy than she already seems, but she’s spared by a low groan from across the chamber as the slumped form of a man against the wall stirs.

He’s not... _lying_, at least she doesn’t think so. People were never her strong suit. After a while she got to know some of the tells, little indications that they might be trying to sell something worthless, or make it seem worth more than it actually was, but she could never quite tell without confirmation from the objects themselves.    


But this man just seems... tired. Hurt. Physically, anyway. And afraid. Maybe even a little desperate, though that one doesn’t quite make sense.    


One glance at Edér’s stony face, the eyes bleeding emotion, tells her all she needs to know. She will finish what the man started. Because he’s right about one thing at least: they deserve better than to be left down here.    


Edér deserves better than to see them like this, to see all of it like this, but the world is cruel and Dyrwood is crueler and he follows her deeper in without a word.    


She doesn’t ask why. She wonders if he even knows himself.    


Spiders and wisps are little threat to them, but that thread is tugging at her consciousness again, at her _soul_, its frayed rusting edges leading her on, except here it splits off into more threads, more _souls, _as she’s beginning to realize, lost here, lost for years in emptiness and bewilderment and betrayal and despair and just... asking why.    


Part of her wonders if these souls were meant for the Hollowborn.    


A hall, pillars crumbling, statues nearly indistinguishable from blank stones, the symbol of the sun and stars etched on the floor.    


Her eyes fix on that symbol as the thread she’s following begins to pulse, and suddenly there’s a foot where she’s looking, and she looks up in alarm to see an entire man standing there, silent, gazing at her. He shouldn’t be here, of course. They should all be gone by now, but their souls are restless and uneasy and their last moments couldn’t have been anything resembling pleasant... so they linger.    


She doesn’t really know how it works of course. But that feels... like something, anyway.    


His form ripples as though in smoke, sometimes a man, sometimes shapeless and nothing, but she takes a step forward, half glancing back at Aloth. “Is.... anyone else seeing this?”    


She’s addressing the soul, the memory, whatever it is, but she can feel the answer in the silence around her, and then—   


And then she’s not her anymore, she’s _him_, and darkness and light surround her and she feels the crushing weight of despair but still a flicker of _hope_ and it hurts so much more knowing it will be snuffed out...   


But he doesn’t know, and someone is singing, and _maybe we’ll be all right after all_ and then she’s her again and he fades from in front of her as she stumbles almost to her knees, her vision still bleeding back through into reality.    


Aloth reaches out to steady her and Edér follows suit, both wearing nearly identical looks of concern.    


“Are you all right?” Aloth is the one to ask—Edér has been nearly silent since they entered, not that that’s a surprise.    


She nods. “Souls... memories. Regrets, I suppose. This place is...” She trails off as they release her, now steady on her feet. “Let’s keep moving.”    


She doesn’t ask if _he’s_ okay.

The silence only deepens as they continue into the temple.    


No, the tomb. It’s long since this was a temple—all that’s left is a resting place for those lost and... a memorial to a dead god.    


She won’t say it. She’d never dream of saying it, but... she’s definitely thinking it.    


But the threads are so strong half the thoughts aren’t even her own. Spirits, specters... people or souls or whatever they are, half-lingering, maybe because some part of them can’t quite believe what happened.    


With each encounter the ache of their combined grief and pain grows within her. The rushing is louder, the threads beginning to break and twist and they’re no longer in a line, it’s more like a ball, a tangled ball of soul threads calling for release but she doesn’t know _how_.    


Edér rings the ceremonial bells with a hollow look on his face, an echo of a rite that will never be performed again, not really.    


He’s talking half to himself when he says, “Keep thinkin’ of all the time I spent here back then... never knowing what was coming.”    


He doesn’t want an answer and she doesn’t give one. Durance mercifully keeps his mouth shut—she thinks she might actually punch him if he showed any disrespect at all in here.    


She’s not sure why, though. She was never much for outright worship—a lot of the gods represented things she tried to live by, but that was all.    


Maybe it’s just that the dead here deserve peace. Maybe it’s just because of what they suffered.    


Maybe it’s also a little bit because the hollow look hasn’t left Edér’s eyes.    


Everyone can see the ghosts in the lower level. Which is a good thing, because they’re trying to kill them all. But even these have stories, flashes of memories, but none of happier times. Fear, pain, worse pain—nothing is clear, but it’s enough to set her heart racing and her mind to destroying the shadows and phantoms as quickly as possible.    


Just to blot out the screams.    


Edér leads them into the vault and the threads are stronger here, and she hears the rushing of a tethered soul as she heard in that cave with the bear, but she can barely distinguish it from the rushing in her ears.    


The scene that meets them is... horrific would be too kind a word. And the only mercy of the lingering soul is that it spares her from witnessing it as she’s drawn into its memory...    


No. She was wrong. This is no mercy at all.    


She can still feel the encompassing oppression of complete darkness. She can still hear the hopeless sounds of the way these people died. The way they were _abandoned_.    


She thinks maybe she’s crying as she returns to herself, the memories fresh in her mind, vivid in her own memory now, beyond any hope of forgetting, these people tearing their dead friends apart hoping to live another day. She fights the urge to throw up.    


“I’m sorry,” she manages to the soul. “Find peace in the next life.”    


It’s all she can offer.    


“Never gets less weird, you staring at nothing like that.”    


She remembers the others and her eyes find Edér as he speaks, half afraid he knows and half afraid he doesn’t. Her mouth opens but there are no words. There’s nothing there, nothing can give voice to everything now implanted in her soul.    


“I’m sorry,” she says again, to him this time, and there’s a sad sort of resignation to him as he meets her eyes, and when the corner of his mouth twitches upward it’s not from happiness or mirth or anything of the sort.    


Nothing joyful exists down here. Not in the room with the blood and the bodies and the treasure half-gnawed because there was nothing else. Not here, with the abandoned dead, who died in the worst way she can imagine.    


She closes her eyes, shakes her head. “You...” She can’t tell him, though she thinks maybe he can guess.    


He doesn’t know who to blame, though. She does.    


They take the remains, grisly task though it is, and leave the lower level by another set of stairs which leads into...   


It’s... bright. After the darkness and gloom of the rest of the place... this almost feels like it might be a temple after all.    


Edér smiles a hollow smile with a grain of truth to it. “Candles are still burning. Not bad for a dead god.”    


She asks because it will distract him, remembering, but as he describes their rite of redemption, he looks... almost at peace. Younger, certainly, and...    


She can’t put her finger on it. But he seems almost... _happy, _just for a moment, in this little chamber with all these burning candles. It’s like something is laid to rest that has been bothering him for too long. The hollow look has vanished with it.    


For a moment it’s almost like she can feel a spark of his peace. And it’s almost enough to make her forget why they’re here.    


But the bodies with them won’t quite let her get that far. Their souls are calling for justice in fraying threads across the temple.    


And she’s the only one here who can deliver.

  
The warmth of Edér’s soft smile bleeds back into the cold dank underground as they leave the candles behind. She hasn’t told him what she saw down in that vault. She can’t.    


But Wirtan needs to answer for what he’s done.    


He’s still where she left him, pressed against the wall, ashen-faced and shaking a little.    


She sets the remains they gathered at his feet. “You lied to me.”    


He goes, if possible, even paler. “I—I don’t know what you’re talking about. W-was it the spiders? I warned you it would be dangerous, was—“   


She takes a step closer and he falls silent. “You’re awfully nervous for a man with nothing to hide.” She takes another step. “Guilty conscience?”    


She’s pretty sure there’s no blood left in his face at this point. “H-how could you possibly-?”    


“Does it matter? They’d have been better off put to the sword by Raedric’s men. Do you even know how they died?”    


He takes a deep, gasping breath. “I tried to warn them! Every day I came down here, risking my neck to tell them Raedric wouldn’t be lenient forever but they never listened! They always just said they’d be reborn in the next life so... so they got what they wanted in the end, right?”    


He’s against the wall, pinned by her arm in seconds. “If you’d seen what I’ve seen you wouldn’t dream of saying that,” she snaps. “I wouldn’t even wish that death on Raedric himself.”   


“Mara.” It’s Aloth’s voice behind her and she turns, not releasing her grip on Wirtan. “What’s going on?”    


“There were memories in that vault, Aloth. Their last days were living Hel, because _he_ told them there was hope and then he left them there.”   


“I thought I could help them!” he bursts out, struggling against her grip. “I thought they could use what was in the vault to buy passage to Aedyr, get free of this place! But when I told Raedric’s men they were gone, they sealed the entrance. There was nothing I could do.”    


“Nothing you could do but tell someone.” She may only have known him a few days, but hearing Edér’s voice that sharp startles her. He looks half-torn between anger and unimaginable grief. After a moment of struggle, he seems to decide to leave the anger to her. “I’d have dug them out with my bare hands if I’d known. Those were some of the only decent folk left in this hole. Now all we’ve got is people like you.”    


Almost unconsciously she reaches for Wirtan’s thread, follows it to the source. She finds fear, genuine remorse, brief flashes of imaginings of the priests’ deaths.    


But nothing he can imagine comes close to the truth. And she can’t just let him go. (The sickening sounds of bodies being torn apart, clawed into by bare hands seem to echo in her consciousness).    


She releases her arm, and he scrambles away from her, eyes wide with fear. “If I ever see you here again you’re a dead man,” she says.    


He gapes. “But—But this is all I have! I can’t leave Gilded Vale, I’ll have—“   


“You abandoned good people to die so you could save your comfortable life. Seems a fitting punishment for you to give it up.”    


He backs away, slowly at first, then turns and flees without a backward glance.   


She can’t look at anyone. Just keeps her eyes fixed on the symbol at their feet. After a long moment, Aloth jerks his head at Durance and leads the way to the temple entrance, leaving her and Edér alone.    


There’s a beat of silence.    


“I’m sorry,” she says, at the same moment that he says, “What did you see?”    


She shouldn’t tell him. No one should have to bear that burden.    


But something in his face stops her protest. He knows what he’s asking.    


She tells him everything. His face is grave, solemn, but he doesn’t flinch.    


Somehow she thinks she should have expected that.    


He doesn’t break eye contact. When she’s done talking, he just nods.    


“Do you think I did the right thing?” She asks at last. “What would you have done?”   


He shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter what I’d have done. You did what felt right, that’s all that matters. Maybe he deserved worse. Maybe he deserved better. Not for me to say.”    


She takes a deep breath. “Thank you.”    


He doesn’t ask what for.    


They leave the temple without another word.


End file.
